


like two hands made to hold

by shadowstuart (khuns)



Category: Dalton Academy Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dalton December Challenge 2020, M/M, au in which julian isn't an actor and they all go to college, everything i've ever written is mutual pining bc of unresolved jogan and this is no exception
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:20:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27962930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khuns/pseuds/shadowstuart
Summary: (#8: gloves & mittens)Julian, the boy who holds sunflowers in his smile, the boy with a laugh that echoes in the soft spaces between notes in a song. The boy who has cradled Logan’s heart in the sunlight of his own palms, who has sat through the fog of Logan’s burning and come out the other end still by his side. Julian, the boy who has seen the most reasons to leave and yet has never left.When Julian’s lips meet his it feels like coming home.or: college au, in which julian isn't an actor and h*ll night doesn't exist
Relationships: Julian Larson-Armstrong/John Logan Wright III
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	like two hands made to hold

**Author's Note:**

> time isn't real timelines and birthdays sure aren't either idk her

“You got me gloves?”

Logan looks up from where he is nudging stray wrapping paper into a pile with his feet; he’s at least half sure the tinge of surprise in Julian’s voice is more prominent than he intends for it to be. “You don’t like them?”

“No, I do,” Julian turns the muted leather over in his hands, doesn’t quite meet Logan’s eye. “I do, really, I just- why gloves?”

“You’re always stealing mine whenever we go out,” Logan frowns. “I figured this is the only way I’d actually get to wear my own gloves.”

Derek snorts from the other end of the sofa, crushing his mound of wrapping paper into a ball. “He already has gloves, he just never remembers to wear them.”

There’s a soft thunk as Julian’s new pair of gloves hit Derek in the face, but Derek just cackles, tossing them back as he gets up. “Twenty bucks he’ll keep stealing your gloves anyway.”

“Will not!”

(He does, later in the day when they sneak out of Dalton to get an early Christmas dinner. Logan lets him.)

-

Julian rubs a hand over his face.

There’s something inherently sadistic, he thinks, about the fact that he, a whole Drama major, has to sit through an entire semester’s worth of basic Linguistics lessons just to fulfil a stupid college requirement. Who the fuck needs to know about how the tongue works and all that when you’re planning to make a living delivering scripts?

A banner pops up on the top right of his laptop screen. _Lunch after your recitation?_

Julian swipes away from his lacklustre notes to his messaging app. _Indoors please, it’s too fucking cold to eat in the park._

_I’m not heartless, I won’t make you eat where you can’t feel your fingers._

_Not heartless? Mr. Logan Wright himself?_

_Shut up and pay attention in class._

_What makes you think I wasn’t before you texted?_

_You were dozing off, don’t think I didn’t notice. What would Murdoch say!_

Julian glances up sharply, and sure enough, through the floor-to-ceiling glass panels on the right of his classroom comes an all too smug smirk from a familiar shock of blonde. He glares half-heartedly as Logan’s grin widens, shark-like.

There’s a rustling of fabric as the boy on his right shifts in his seat, the only warning Julian gets before Sebastian is leaning over into his ear, “There’s a cute boy outside smiling at you.”

 _He’s an asshole_ , Julian wants to mutter back, but before he can the TA is already dismissing them and his words are lost in the clamour of students packing up.

Sebastian groans, stretching lithely. “Wanna grab lunch?”

Julian bites his lip, shooting a look out the glass windows. Logan’s brows are slightly furrowed, as if wondering why Julian is taking his own sweet time putting his laptop in his bag, and Julian sighs. He tugs his coat on. “Maybe another time? I already have lunch plans.”

Sebastian just laughs, swinging his bag over his shoulder. “Popular guy, huh? Wanna pencil me in for next week?”

There’s something light, bright, about the smile in Sebastian’s voice that makes Julian look over. “Sure,” he finds himself saying. “Sure.”

Logan’s frowning by the time Julian makes it out of the classroom, waving goodbye to Sebastian. “Who’s that?”

“Hello to you too, Mr. McGrumpy,” Julian says pleasantly, before freezing. He goes through the motions of patting the pockets of his coat down hastily, and pouts mournfully when his hands come up empty. “Lo-“

Logan raises an eyebrow, soft gloves already held up between his long fingers.

“You’re the best,” Julian breathes, beaming. “How’d you know?”

Logan just laughs, pushing away from the wall. “I’m your best friend, I think I’d know when you need gloves. Honestly, what’s the point in me getting you so many pairs when you always leave the house without a single one?”

Julian ignores the salty bloom of warmth in the hollow of his chest and follows after Logan, tugging the pliant black of Logan’s gloves on. “So you can bring them to me, of course.”

-

Julian turns sixteen crying.

He spends the first minutes of his sixteenth birthday trying to keep his eyes from dispensing his body weight in tears, but the moment he hears Derek’s attempt at silencing _his_ sniffles the dam breaks. Logan keeps his mouth shut and hands tissues to them both.

“That was stupid,” Logan says, after the movie ends. “They could have just let Ellie grow old with Carl, we could have had an entire movie with this cute old couple travelling in a house with fucking ballo-“

“Shut up,” Derek manages. “We know you were crying the hardest.”

Just like that, something in the air cracks, and they all dissolve into shaky, snotty laughter nobody can quite hold back.

It’s not the first time the three of them have cried watching a movie and it will certainly not be the last - Derek has always had a soft spot for romcoms and there’s just something about a Pixar film that sets Logan’s waterworks off - but there is something about the moment, cider-warm and glass-clear, that settles gently in the bottom of Julian’s heart, a glazed memory to be taken out and savoured in the years to come.

“If one of you assholes ever builds a house with balloons you better invite the other two of us on it,” he says, instead.

Logan snorts lightly and tips his head back. “You better invite the other two of us to _live_ in it.”

In the dim light of Derek’s laptop, Logan looks almost ethereal. His bangs, messy and uncombed after being towel-dried in the shower, are a pale moonlight on Logan’s closed eyelids; Julian wonders faintly if they would feel just as soft.

It leaves him with a funny sort of feeling in his mouth, like he just looked down from the top of a Ferris wheel. He swallows hard. Tears his eyes away.

“-say it! It’s not valid until you put it in words.” Logan is saying, reaching across him to dig a finger into Derek’s thigh.

“Alright, alright, ow - I, Derek Siegerson, promise that if all three of us are not married by the age of fifty- ow, _forty_ , I said _forty_ , Logan, dammit - I will move into a house with the both of you and I will allow you to adopt dogs and cats and attach as many balloons to the roof as you see fit.”

Logan leans back, satisfied, and there is a blessed moment of silence before he directs the heat of his gaze onto Julian.

Julian raises an eyebrow back. “As if I’m gonna live with your crusty ass when we’re forty-“ but before he can finish his sentence they are already bubbling with laughter so bright it paints the insides of Julian’s ribs a sunset-gold.

Realistically there are rarely ever high school friends that remain friends that long, Julian knows. But sitting here, Logan and Derek’s shoulders warm against his own, he lets himself dream. He lets himself dream of a future out there with them, with all three of them, with their rescue dogs and cats and whatever the hell Julian wants to adopt on the side, and he doesn’t have to promise anything out loud for Logan or Derek to know that it is a future that he wants with every fibre of his being.

Julian turns sixteen sandwiched on a sofa between his best friends, lit up with the blue glow of a laptop perched on the edge of his desk and the warm glow of their laughter, tears long traded in for the giddy promise of forever. 

-

_Airdrop: Note from Bas_

Julian raises an eyebrow. _Accept_.

_It’s so cute your boyfriend always waits for you to end class._

Julian looks up. True enough, Logan’s leaning against the wall outside their classroom again, eyes trained on a sheaf of papers in his hands. The dark green scarf Julian got him last Christmas is wound around the lower half of his face, but that doesn’t stop the flickering glances or occasional outright stare from some of the other people in the classroom.

Julian’s chest tightens, and he has to look away.

 _Not my boyfriend,_ he types back, and after a pause, hits enter. _Just one of my roommates. Why are we using Notes?_

Bas’ return Airdrop comes almost immediately. _Wouldn’t have to use Notes if I got your number._

Julian snorts, barely biting back the smile that threatens to unfurl across his face. It’s been a while (two weeks ago, at one of Derek’s friend’s parties, but who’s counting?) since he last got hit on and even longer since he’d entertained it - maybe... maybe this time he deserves it. Deserves a chance to indulge himself.

He flicks one look up at where Logan has tucked his papers away and is now staring down at his phone.

 _Sure_ , he sends back. Why not.

-

“You got me gloves _again_?”

Logan laughs this time. A neon brilliance, lemon-sweet, hangs in the air between them, gets tangled in the standard-issue Dalton room carpets. “I’ll keep giving you gloves every goddamned Christmas until you stop stealing mine.”

Julian doesn’t try holding back a grin of his own. “Never.”

It will turn into tradition: Logan will gift him gloves he will always leave draped over the edge of his desk, just in reach of his keys but just out of sight. It will turn into mornings of Julian rushing off to class, coffee thermos in hand, at first forgetting how the winter chill will nip at his fingertips when he gets to the Dalton courtyards but later, way into college, always remembering how the caramel of Logan’s palms will be warmer than anything he owns. It will turn into nights of Logan’s voice weaving a quiet spiderweb on the back of his eyelids, of Logan’s piano teaching him what it means to be wrapped in starlight, of green eyes soft as thunder in the space between closing his eyes and falling asleep.

And it will turn into this, something wide and nameless and frightening: Logan always offering Julian this small measure of warmth he craves but can never quite convince himself to settle for.

But right here, right now, Logan is laughing at something Derek is saying and he is the brightest thing Julian has ever seen, all spark on the kindling of Julian’s skin, kiln that never stops burning. There is something about the way his best friend’s eyes are crinkled into soft crescent moons that makes Julian feel like he has swallowed the stars.

It is so easy, in this moment, to fall in l-

To fall in something. Julian leaves it at that.

-

“I don’t understand- this is, like, the third time he’s blown me off for lunch in two weeks to fucking ‘study’ with- who the fuck is this Seabass guy anyway?“

Derek pinches the bridge of his nose. It’s the fourth time this week Logan has barged into the kitchen, completely ignoring the fact that Derek is obviously busy on his laptop hammering out a goddamned paper, and started complaining at him. He wonders faintly why he ever agreed to rooming with both Logan _and_ Julian and if going through the trouble of finding new roommates would be worth it. Something in his gut leans towards ‘yes’.

“The name Sebastian,” Derek says, tearing his eyes away from his screen, “is not that hard to remember.”

Logan waves him away impatiently. “The point is, why do they have to study so much? We’re, what, a month into a new semester-“

“Not all of us can get stellar grades effortlessly, your highness-“

“-and he’s already forgoing lunch to study with this guy? Tell me that isn’t ridiculous.”

“I skipped lunch to finish this paper,” Derek points at his laptop. “It’s still unfinished.”

Logan stares. “You’re writing this paper in the kitchen and you’re telling me you didn’t bother standing up to pull lunch out of the fridge?”

Derek just sighs. No point aiming to finish the paper now, he supposes, and wearily eases his laptop shut. There has to be some form of leftovers in the fridge. “Look, if Jules wants to study with someone in his class that’s his business. Would you rather him flunk out?”

Logan shuffles his chair forward so Derek can inch past him to the fridge. “No.”

“Then why get on his case for studying with someone?” There’s a half-eaten sandwich left unwrapped on a plate, unceremoniously jammed in between Logan’s oat milk and Julian’s avocadoes. Unsafe, Derek decides - he doesn’t quite like the look of the green spots blooming on the bread.

“I… I just don’t like that he’s skipping lunch to do it.”

Derek pulls a half-empty container of fried rice from the back of the fridge and cracks the lid open to give it a sniff. Probably not a biohazard, he supposes, and stuffs it in the microwave before turning around to face Logan again. “Yeah? Or do you just not like that he’s skipping lunch with you?”

The thunder on Logan’s face is response enough, Derek decides, and he grins. “Why, you jealous? You jealous Jules is prioritising someone over you-“

“Shut up,” comes the reply, and it sounds so much more venomous than Derek expects that he pauses in surprise, arm mid-way to the microwave.

“Are you really? Of Jules’ study buddy?”

“I’m _not_ ,” Logan says, standing up abruptly. He refuses to meet Derek’s eyes. “You know what, Princess can go do whatever the hell he wants, I don’t fucking care.”

Logan makes it all the way to the entrance of the kitchen before Derek finds his tongue again. “When was the last time you saw Jules interested in someone, Lo? Because him choosing to spend some of his time with someone over spending it with us is going to happen eventually, whether you like it or not.”

Logan’s back remains silent for a moment, and then- “I don’t see how that has anything to do with this.”

But he does, Derek knows he does; he has seen the tense line of Logan’s shoulders too many times over their four odd years of friendship for him not to know.

“Let him have this,” Derek says, instead. “Just this once.”

Logan leaves.

-

When Logan bursts into Derek’s room Julian just sighs. Shifts his empty coffee cup off the edge of the desk.

 _If this is about Blair again_ , Julian tells himself, _you are hereby allowed to get yourself another cup of coffee._

“What do I do for Blaine’s birthday,” he demands, without preamble. Julian’s fingers find the handle of his mug.

Derek doesn’t look up from his math homework. “Give him insoles.”

Julian cannot help himself - he snorts; Logan glowers at them from where he has flopped over on Derek’s couch. “Should I record a cover for him?”

“If it means you’re going to play a Taylor Swift song on repeat again,” Julian drawls, standing up, “do it far, far away from Stuart. I hear her in my sleep sometimes.”

He barely hears Logan’s noise of protest as he sweeps out of the room.

He doesn’t quite know when Blake appeared in their lives, all puppy eyes and too-big smiles and the new centre of Logan’s world, but he remembers the first day Logan brings him over. The first day Logan sings with him. The first day Logan spends the entirety of dinner talking about the autumn of Blanc’s eyes. The first day Julian cannot say Logan’s name without choking on the knot in his throat.

Bailey is in the kitchen when he enters, and he nods a hello as Julian makes a beeline for the coffee machine. “Logan being dramatic again?”

Julian barks out a laugh that sounds more tired than anything. “As usual.”

Bailey hums in sympathy. “George just bought new coffee beans, if you want something stronger. They’re on the second shelf.”

“You’re a star,” Julian tells him. He takes his time making his new cup - sure, he feels bad for leaving Derek to fend for himself against a lovesick Logan, but hopefully by the time he makes it back upstairs Logan has exhausted the topic of Blaise and he can work on his English homework without having the inside of his mouth taste like he swallowed vinegar.

He hears Logan before he even reaches the room - “He recorded an entire cover of Sparks Fly for me for my birthday and it’s been ages and I still can’t figure out what song he’d want for his!” - and sighs.

Derek slams his calculator down right as Julian enters the doorway. “I don’t know, I’m straight! I don’t know what the fuck he’d want for his birthday, ask Jules or something!”

“If being straight impedes your ability to pick songs I’m very sorry for Casey,” Logan snorts. He narrowly dodges Derek chucking a pencil at his face and continues, “Besides, isn’t… isn’t J straight too?”

Julian freezes, mug inches away from landing on the table.

Derek’s scoff sounds from miles away. “No, he’s not.” Julian wonders why it feels like Derek’s mouth is moving in slow motion, why his heart is the loudest thing in the room. “I’ve seen the way he looks at-"

He stops. Stares at Julian.

Julian prays his hands are not shaking as much as they feel like they are.

It flits across his mind for a split second, what it would mean to say no. What it would mean to complete Derek’s sentence.

What it would mean to lose a best friend that would never look at him the same way.

“What,” Logan demands. “The way he looks at what.”

He wants to say: The way I look at you. At how you laugh like summer rain feels. At the way you fight with the sun in your throat. At how you love with electricity flowing through every fibre of your being, how you love like a fire and a tidal wave and a sea storm all at once.

He wants to say: I have thrown away what it means to be straight since the night I fell sick two weeks ago and you stayed up waiting for my fever to break and the weight of your warmth by the side of my bed felt like sitting in a patch of moonlight. Since the time Derek left for his first away game last month with the rowing team and you turned the sound on your phone all the way up so that even if we fell asleep in his room while waiting for the results that night we’d still know immediately the moment they won. Since the day you hung up on your dad for making a homophobic comment but called back two minutes later to ask Michelle what she wanted for Valentine’s Day.

He wants to say: I have thrown away what it means to be straight since last Winter Fest when you fell asleep on my shoulder and all I could think about was whether the soft pink of your lips would be as warm as the rest of you.

Instead, Julian breathes in. Breathes out. Sets his mug on the table. Says, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m straight. Too bad, your Highness.”

-

It is four thirty six in the afternoon and Sebastian is handing him a gift bag in the middle of a Think Coffee.

“I know it’s a little too early for Christmas,” Bas says, when they are packing up their notes, “but I don’t know if I’ll see you after the final next week.”

When Julian opens the bag he nearly laughs - nestled in a mound of paper are a pair of gloves. He lifts them out of the bag, pretending to admire them, but before he can come up with something to say Bas blurts out a quick, “You’re always blowing on your fingers when you walk into class. I hope you like them.”

He sounds sincere, and when Julian chokes out an, “I do,” he pretends it is because he is moved by Bas’ thoughtfulness.He pulls on the gloves when they are about to leave. “Thank you,” he says again, and there is a slight twinge in his heart when Bas just beams back. “I do feel bad for not having gotten you anything, though.”

Bas looks amused - the dying winter sunlight does not make the glint in his eyes any less dull. “You don’t have to.”

Julian makes a sound of protest and Bas just laughs, easy as breathing. “If you want… go on a date with me when we come back from break. None of this studying stuff. A real date.”

When he looks over at Bas his eyes are sparkling, tinged with something that looks like hope. They are soft, kind, an entirely wrong shade of gr-

“Okay,” Julian exhales. The word tumbling from his lips surprises him more than he expects, and he flushes red from the weight of what he has just agreed to. “Okay.”

Sebastian leaves him a handsome smile as they part ways, leaves him wondering why the smile feels more like a lake and less like an ocean.

Derek is sitting at the kitchen table when he gets back, lit only by the glow of his laptop.

“You’re going to need glasses if you keep doing that,” Julian says, dropping into the seat next to him.

Derek just hums, fingers blindly seeking out his coffee mug; he frowns when he lifts it to his lips and it is empty. Julian huffs and gestures for the mug before getting up to switch the coffee machine on.

He sneaks another glance at Derek while waiting for it to blink to life. “Bas asked me out on a date. After winter break.”

Derek’s eyes swivel up from his laptop. “A date?”

“I said yes,” Julian says. The words rush out all at once. “I said yes to going on a date with Sebastian.”

“You- what-“

It is so dark in their little kitchen that Julian pretends not to see the startled flicker of emotions across Derek’s face. “Why didn’t you turn the light on?”

Derek splutters. “It was bright when I sat down- Wait- What do you mean-“

“I said yes to a date, Derek,” Julian drawls. His fingers are tight around the mug. “What you’ve been telling me to do for the past few years.”

There is silence, for a while, as Derek processes this. “And this guy… you like him?”

 _He’s cute_ , Julian wants to say. _He has a nice voice, like Logan’s, and his hands look just as soft. He is warm ocean wave where Logan is bonfire and he is mint gum where Logan is the red glow of a cigarette. When he looks at me it feels like I am not second choice._

“I can,” he says, eventually.

Derek exhales. Doesn’t say anything.

The silence stretches, rubber banding around all the words Derek chooses to leave unsaid.

“Listen-“ Julian starts, and they both wince at how loud the word cracks, a snap in the tension neither were prepared for. His voice settles into something a little more quiet, a little more tired. “I thought you’d be happy I was moving on from Logan.”

“I am,” Derek says slowly, voice cautious. Julian refuses to meet his eye. “I just want you to be happy about it too.”

It is five twenty three in the afternoon and Julian is sitting in the dark of his kitchen, wondering why he isn’t.

-

“The barista gave me the most disgusted look, this frappe better be worth it.” Logan plops down on the seat next to Julian.

Julian makes a pleased sound, hands shooting out to grab for his drink. “Bet they weren’t disgusted at the drink, they were just disgusted with your ugly mug.”

Logan grumbles under his breath. “You added so many pumps of whatever it’s not even coffee anymore. Straight up turned into an abomination.”

“ _You’re_ an abomination,” Julian shoots back. He unwraps his straw and takes a sip, barely holding back a moan when the first punch of raspberry hits his tongue. “What time does Derek’s plane land?”

Logan flicks a look at his watch. “He did say he was flying straight from Dalton, so I’m guessing... In about ten minutes? He should get through luggage claim in about half an hour.”

Julian hums, and they lapse into a comfortable silence, sipping on their drinks and scrolling on their phones.

It’s nice spending time with Logan like this, Julian thinks. It reminds him of freshman year, mindlessly being around each other without the exhaustion of social interaction. It reminds him of simpler times.

His finger stills on his home screen, a blurry candid of Logan and Derek splashing around in Logan’s pool from last summer, nearly a year ago now. They are awash with the cherry of sunset - Logan is half-turned from the camera, laughing, his blonde kissed rose by the setting sun.

Simpler times, he thinks, swallowing hard. Simpler times.

“Jules...” There is a clack as Logan sets his phone down on the table. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

Julian tears his eyes away from his phone. “No need to get all polite now.”

Logan scoffs lightly, but there is something tense in his gaze that makes Julian set his phone down too. Julian sighs and softens his tone. Tries again. “What do you want, your Majesty?”

There is silence for a while; Logan is clearly struggling to get the right words, mouth opening and closing a few times in an effort to edit his thoughts _(for once_ , a small part of Julian huffs). It stretches on, and Julian is about to offer up some variant of _your brain that empty?_ or _that’ll be five dollars for my time_ when Logan finally speaks.

“This last semester... I know I wasn’t the easiest to deal with.”

Julian freezes. Of all things he expected Logan to address, this was not one of them.

Between Blaine and Senator Wright and Blaine and that other Windsor guy and for the love of god, _Blaine_ , this semester easily ranks at the bottom of all the semesters Julian has had so far - _not the easiest_ really is the mildest way to put it. But he holds his tongue, and he listens, because at least, at _least_ Logan is _trying_.

Something he wishes more people could see.

“I know I wasn’t really... around half the time,” Logan’s voice is uncertain. His fingers trace invisible letters through the condensation on his cup. “And the times I was around I made it all about me and Blaine.”

Julian doesn’t miss the way Logan rounds out Blaine’s name, all smooth marble and cloud-soft. It sends a now-familiar twinge through him, this reminder that Blaine will always occupy a space in Logan’s heart Julian will never come close to filling.

But he keeps a straight face anyway, because man, isn’t that what Julian Larson is best at doing.

“I just...” Logan takes a deep breath, and his next words all tumblr out in a rush. “I know you had a shitty semester too - you smiled less and laughed less and I know I didn’t spend as much time in Stuart around you and Derek as much as I used to but even then... even then I could tell you weren’t as happy as before. And I’m... I’m sorry I didn’t try to do anything about it.”

Some part of Julian dully registers the pain in his palms from where he is clenching his fists so tight his fingernails dig into flesh, but his mind is reeling too much to care. He wonders faintly about what makes it seem more like a dream - the fact that Logan is apologising or the fact that Logan even looked away from Blaine, at Julian, long enough to realise. That even after the shitstorm this semester was for Logan it has weighed hard enough on Logan’s mind for him to start a conversation about it.

“I’m surprised you noticed,” he manages, and the sound of his voice seems so detached from him, so... so _normal_ it surprises even himself.

Logan smiles. Tired. Doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m a real shit friend, huh.”

“Lo-“

“I know I am, Jules-“

“But you’re trying.” There is enough desperation, enough urgency, enough ache that leaks through in those three words that it shuts Logan up. Makes Logan stare.

Julian swallows. Wills his voice to become steady. “You’re trying, and at the end of the day isn’t that what matters?”

Logan opens his mouth, but Julian beats him to the punch. “We’ll keep trying, Logan. We’ll keep trying until we’re forty and with our shit luck, definitely still single, and we’ll move into a goddamned house with five rescue cats and a fucking hedgehog and we’ll make Derek blow up balloons for us so we can float the fuck away.”

Logan’s laugh is shaky. “D has to blow all the balloons?”

“You have to do a good portion of it too,” Julian waves his hand magnanimously. “Warbler and all that.”

They grin at each other, watery green on brown.

He knows this will not be the last time he will have to sit through Logan falling in love and he knows this will not be the last time he will have to pick up the pieces.

But if this is what it takes to keep his best friend, his best _friends_ , by his side, Julian thinks, he will do it.

And so he does, because when it comes to Logan he can never resist.

-

Logan prods suspiciously at the gloves on the kitchen table. “D, these yours?”

Derek spares a look from where he is closing up his travel mug. “No, mine are Under Armour. J’s, maybe?”

Logan’s brow furrows. He knows all of Julian’s gloves, not least because he has been the one buying them. This is not one of them. He flips them between his hands - it’s odd though, the way he has never seen Julian use a single pair of gloves Logan has bought for him; yet this pair is still on the table, slightly crumpled as if just taken off yesterday night.

“Maybe it’s from Sebastian,” is all Derek says as he leaves for class.

Sebastian.

Logan is left standing in the middle of the kitchen, fingers on the soft of Julian’s gloves, wondering why the feeling in his mouth tastes so much like the familiar bitter tang of disappointment.

-

Logan starts walking.

He doesn’t care that it’s past curfew - it has been a long, long time since Logan last felt lava this white-hot flowing through his veins.

But oh, he remembers it. His body remembers its burn, the way it sears him all the way down to his fingertips, the way it imprints flashes of rage on the inside of his eyelids.

There are a few Stuarts still milling in the common room working on homework when Logan strides past them, slamming the main door behind him. He doesn’t care - he’s the fucking Prefect; fuck if he doesn’t abuse that power at least once, he’s going to walk wherever he goddamn wants.

He makes it out of the (suspiciously unmanned) Dalton gates and makes a turn in a random direction and walks.

He walks until the trembling in his hands lessen, until his fingernails stop leaving crescents on the soft of his palm. He walks until the roads start blurring together in knots and the muted flat of the streetlights pale in comparison to the dim burn in his legs.

He walks until the snake that has wrapped its length around his throat slithers back into darkness and he is left, all alone, in the middle of a bunch of empty gas stations far, far away from anything that will remotely remind him of himself.

He picks one at random to walk into. The blue-capped employee barely spares him a glance as the bell on the door chimes, choosing instead to keep restocking the shelf of chips beside her.

He wanders the store for a while, fingers prodding items on the shelves just to look busy.

He’s been here once before, with Julian. Derek had gone on a day prior along with the football team for an away game, throwing Logan the keys to his Corvette and telling them to _show up for the damn game this Saturday and cheer me on for once_. He had also conveniently forgotten to fill the tank with gas.

 _It’s a five hour drive_ , Logan’d argued. _We don’t need ten packs of gummies._ Julian just looked unimpressed, and continued shoving drinks and lollipops into Logan’s arms.

Julian was right, of course - they demolished all ten within the first three hours, belting at the top of their lungs to whatever crap was on the radio.

He still has the photos they took on that weekend trip, small snapshots that he caught at intersections and ones that Julian had sneaked. He has one of Julian brandishing a bag of cola worms at him, windows down and feet propped up on Derek’s precious dashboard; Julian has one of him trying to unscrew the cap off a bottle of soda with his teeth, one hand still on the steering wheel.

He has one of Julian leaning against the window, sunset dancing between his eyelashes, long fingers tapping a lollipop against the soft of his lips. In the photo Julian is half-turned towards Logan, butterscotch of his eyes crinkled up mid-laugh.

It still takes Logan’s breath away.

 _He_ takes Logan’s breath away.

And isn’t that all of Julian, really? The way he laughs, bright as honey. The way he folds love in the sharp corners of his words, gives so much of himself to the people he loves, always, always without question.

The way his hands have always been open when Logan’s have been clenched, the way he always the first one to reach out to Logan and the way he always forgives and forgives and _forgives_.

He should be grateful, really, to have a best friend with palms as warm as Julian’s. But there is something insatiable that sings through his blood whenever Julian is right _there_ and-

(A shaky b _esides, isn’t J straight too_ \- a cough-)

_(Yeah, I’m straight. Too bad, your Highness.)_

It has been forever and Julian’s words still scorch on the way down.

Logan will swallow them anyway, seawater on wounds barely closed, because this is the one relationship Logan cannot, _will_ not, let himself ruin.

He will try to replace the whiskey of Julian’s smile with the curve of Blaine’s, Josh’s, Kurt’s laughter, and will ignore the fact that nothing ever quite burns the same - Julian has always been a pocket of dusk, and no matter how much Logan tries to chase after the last rays of his light he will always be slipping away, disappearing into places Logan will never be able to reach.

How tired he is, always running after dusk. How tired he is, when he wants is to be able to sit in the warmth of dawn.

“You alright?” The gas station employee is beside him, eyeing him suspiciously.

“Y-yeah,” Logan releases the breath he didn’t know he was holding. Uncurls the tension in his fist, one finger at a time.

He reaches blindly for the shelf in front of him. His fingers catch on a display of lollipops, mixed flavours scattered in a pile for shoppers to sift through.

His fingers find their treasure before he registers it, slowly picking out red-wrapped options from the pile. He doesn’t know how many cherry-flavoured ones there ends up being, eventually, but when he leaves the store the bag in his hand is heftier than he expects.

He sways for a moment when he steps out into the cold light of the gas station. Pulls out his phone to check for directions for the trek home.

> > 37 missed calls from D Boy 100
> 
> > 48 missed calls from Jules ♡
> 
> > 134 messages from My Idiots!!!!!

His phone buzzes quietly, a barely perceptible vibration down his arm. Logan closes his eyes.

“Fuck- he finally picked up, D, it’s him- fuck, Lo, where the fuck are you?” Julian’s voice breaks through, loose thread caught on sharp glass, this close to unravelling.

Logan shifts his weight. “I think… I think I’m in the next town. Don’t come, it’s past curfew, I don’t want you to get in troub-“

“Fuck- he’s in the fucking- Lo, you fucking idiot, share your fucking location, I’ll just track you- Don’t fucking move, I swear to god, or I’ll run you over with this car myself-“ The line goes dead.

Logan stares at his phone until it blinks black from inactivity. He feels hollowed out, like someone has taken a spoon and scraped out what it means to be human from the inside of his bones, like the moment he stops paying attention he will disappear into nothing. He sinks down to the ground.

This is how Julian finds him, staring into space, holding his knees, eyes empty.

“Lo, you idiot- oh, Lo…”

This is how he sees Julian, backlit and haloed by the artificial warm of street lights.

He hears Julian heave a sigh and sink down on the sidewalk curb next to him. A wordless _what happened?_ dangles in the air.

Logan opens his mouth. Closes it. He doesn’t want to revisit what happened on the phone with the Senator - his bones now feel so, so heavy - but there are unshed tears in Julian’s eyes and whatever is left in the pit of his stomach drops.

“You said you were craving cherry lollipops,” he says, instead. His voice comes out raw.

Julian takes one look at the flimsy plastic bag between Logan’s hands. He stays silent.

They stay silent.

He doesn’t register Julian crying until the first tremor of Julian’s shoulders brushes against his own.

“Jules-“ he tries saying, but Julian just stands up. Takes a shuddering breath. Turns to hold a hand out to Logan.

“Let’s go, Logan. Let’s go home.” Julian’s voice is low. He sounds impossibly tired.

Logan looks at his best friend, this boy with swollen eyes and shoulders of steel and streetlight dancing through his hair.

He takes Julian’s hand.

_Let’s go home._

-

> < They have marshmallow hot chocolate. Do you want that instead of the red velvet one?
> 
> > OMG YES ur the best

Logan snorts and pockets his phone. Trust Julian to want the sweetest thing on the menu.

The staff makes quick work of their drinks, and Logan makes it out of the crowded Bryant Park food tent in under ten minutes. He fishes in his coat pocket for his phone, shifting Derek’s and Michelle’s Christmas gifts and the cardboard cup holder from one arm to the other.

Julian picks up on the third ring. “Did you get the goods?”

“I got the goods,” Logan confirms. “You’re making it sound like I just finished a drug exchange, jesus- where are you?”

“I’m walking towards the rink! The salesgirl roped me into buying more stupid socks for Derek.”

“As long as the stupidity doesn’t overlap with mine-“

“Nobody can beat your level of stupid, thanks.”

“Shut up, birdbrain, where are you?”

Julian makes a scandalised noise. “You were the one with a fucking pompous bird in high school and you’re calling _me_ birdbrain?”

If Logan could roll his eyes through a phone conversation he would. “I asked you where the fuck you were, Princess.”

Julian just laughs. “I just passed that spicy honey booth.”

“The- what-“

“You’re too fucking stupid to find me,” Julian says breezily. “Tell me where you are and I’ll come to you.”

“I’m between the food tent and the skating rink. I’ll move towards the rink to look for you?”

“Lovely. Don’t make the babies on the ice cry when I’m not there.”

“No, they’ll cry when you show up-“

“Yeah, from _adoration_ -“

“Of your ugly face? I think the fuck not-“ Logan winces as a parent nearby shoots him a glare, turning her child away from him. “Sorry, ma’am. Come quickly, your hot choolate’s gonna be frozen chocolate soon.”

Julian hums and hangs up.

He calls back five minutes later.

“You’d think that you being a six foot idiot would make you easier to find,” Julian deadpans.

“I’m six three, thanks-“

“Oh, sorry - you’d think that you being a BIG idiot would make you easier to find-“

“Oh, fuck you- where the fuck are you, I’m by the rink.”

“So am I.”

Logan blinks. Takes an entire second to process, then- “I hate to tell you, J, but the rink?”

“What?”

“A rink has four sides, you idiot.”

There is a moment of silence on the line, and finally, an embarrassed, “Shut the _fuck_ up.”

Logan bursts out laughing - the cardboard cup holder stays balanced in his hand with sheer force of will.

“You’re the one who brought the rink up in the first place, fuck you!” There is a laugh in Julian’s voice, tinny through Logan’s phone audio but golden all the same. “Stay where you are, you asshole, I see you.”

Logan spots him immediately, appearing from behind a crowd of high schoolers and tourists. The white of Julian’s hoodie is already bright against the navy of his overcoat, but as he navigates his way through the crowd with polite smiles and murmured _excuse me_ s there is something inexplicably radiant about Julian that keeps Logan’s eyes fixed on him.

He’s always been beautiful. Always will be.

Julian is slightly breathless by the time he gets to where Logan is leaning against the railings of the rink, cheeks flushed and beaming. “You got the goods!”

“I got the goods,” Logan grins back. Julian’s fingers brush his as he hands over Julian’s hot chocolate; Logan frowns, chalks the odd shiver it sends down his spine up to the fact that Julian’s fingers are ice-cold. “Your fingers are freezing.”

Julian waves him away, taking a sip. “The hot chocolate will warm me up.” He wraps his hands around the paper cup. “Hot chocolate’s always best when you’re cold.”

Logan snorts, unimpressed. “Your gloves are literally in your pocket and you never thought to put them on?”

Julian’s cheeks colour a little. “No?”

Logan sighs. He takes a sip from his own hot chocolate cup and turns to face the rink. Tries to adopt a nonchalant tone. “Those gloves... where’d you get them from? They don’t look like the ones I got you.”

Julian pauses, shoots a look at his coat pocket. “Oh, uh. Bas.”

Logan keeps his tone light. “Sebastian? The one you’ve been hanging out a lot with?”

“Yeah,” Julian says. He lowers his hot chocolate cup. “Yeah, he... he asked me out on a date.”

Immediately Logan feels a wince of sympathy for Sebastian - oh, the shared gay experience of falling for someone straight, of falling for someone as radiant as _Julian_ \- before it is masked with some strange sort of triumph. He takes a sip to hide his smile. “Poor guy. Did you turn him down yet?”

Silence.

Logan chances a look to his right - Julian is staring out at the rink, biting his lip. “Jules?”

“I don’t know,” Julian says, eventually. His brow is furrowed. “I don’t know if I’ll turn him down.”

Logan blinks. “But you’re...”

Julian laughs softly. It comes out more weary than anything, a raincloud, laden. “No,” he says, and smiles, as if he has not just brought Logan’s single braincell to its knees. “I haven’t been, not for a while.”

Logan’s mind goes blank. Julian. _Julian_. Julian with his soft lips and his soft palms and a tongue so sharp Logan has never once stood a chance.

“Not since sophomore year,” Julian says, and when he turns to meet Logan’s eyes there is something small and sad playing at the corner of his lips.

“Why- why didn’t you tell me?” Logan whispers. It comes out more like a croak, but once the words start spilling from his lips it is a waterfall he cannot stop. “Why didn’t you tell me? You know I’d have been okay with it, you _knew_ I was gay- of all people- I thought you- You could have told me, I was- I’ve been-“

“Stop,” Julian’s voice is low. He shakes his head. Looks everywhere but at Logan. “Stop. I know you would have been okay with it, I _know_. It’s just because I didn’t want you to know that- I didn’t- I just-“

He tilts his head back. His eyes are closed, like he is trying his best to hold something back, hold something in, and when his next words leak out they leak out in a raw whisper; they ring like gunshots in the hollow of Logan’s ribs.

“I didn’t want you to know I was in love with you.”

The world goes silent.

Julian, this boy who holds sunflowers in his smile, this boy with a laugh that echoes in the soft spaces between notes in a song. This boy, brave and funny and kind and smart and everything in between, everything Logan is not, everything Logan wants to be. This boy who has cradled Logan’s heart in the sunlight of his own palms, who has sat through the fog of Logan’s burning and come out the other end still by his side.

Julian, the boy who has seen the most reasons to leave and yet has never left.

_I didn’t want you to know I was in love with you._

Julian, the boy with his head tilted back and the curve of his eyelashes brushing the pink of his cheeks. The boy Logan has spent the last three, four years trying his best to stop loving.

_This is you, waiting._

He shifts, a planet on orbit around his sun. _This is me, always choosing you._

“Julian,” he says, at last, and as Julian turns to look at him, flush-cheeked and red-nosed and impossibly close, everything stutters to a stop.

He knows- no, he has seen for himself the way Julian’s eyes have always shone gold, but nothing prepares Logan for the way they glow, the way _he_ glows now in the halo of Bryant Park’s spotlights, all warm rain and September clouds, thickened honey and the warm amber of dawn.

A sunrise, all on his own.

-

“Julian,” Logan whispers. The name burns its way off the tip of his tongue, questioning, pleading; Julian can hear the desperation painted across the glass of his voice.

He cannot help himself. He turns and looks, _looks_ at Logan even though he knows he shouldn’t; he turns and looks, because no matter how hard he tries to lock himself up Logan will always be his skeleton key.

Logan is closer than he expects; all he can see is Logan’s eyes, sea-wild and careful all at once. flaring like the burn of warmth under fingertips that have spent way too long in the cold. When his fingers come up, they are trembling, feather-light on the cold of Julian’s cheek.

_This is you, waiting._

When Julian’s lips meet his it feels like coming home.

They fit together like they have always been two hands made to hold, two asteroids burning their way through the universe just for a chance to meet, and when they break apart there is something in Logan’s eyes that burn like starlight. Something unwavering, something unapologetic. Something that reads like a future.

_This is me, always choosing you, too._

-

Logan doesn’t get him gloves this year.

Julian gets instead a pair of stupid socks with Logan’s stupid face on them and a note that says, “Step on me, king!” and when he chases Logan around the apartment with them all Logan can say to defend himself between wheezes of laughter is, “At least your feet will be warm this year too!”

Logan doesn’t get him gloves this year, and it’s alright - getting to hold Logan’s hand has always been much better anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> f in the chat for all the times derek has struggled to finish an essay because of these two idiots


End file.
